The Big Picture
- David Gordon Green’s early indie dramas, such as George Washington, showcased his groundbreaking and unique perspective on rural life in America.
- While Green found mainstream success with the comedy film Pineapple Express, his subsequent comedic efforts failed to capture the same personal touch as his earlier work.
- Green’s recent involvement in horror sequels, like the Halloween trilogy, has been seen as a deviation from his original voice as an arthouse filmmaker, and he should consider returning to his indie roots.
There aren’t many filmmakers working today whose filmographies are quite as wild as David Gordon Green’s. After a series of critically acclaimed independent films in the early 21st century, Green made a breakthrough as a comedy director with 2008’s Pineapple Express. While the comedy classic has now become a beloved, permanent fixation of stoner culture, Green’s subsequent comedy films failed to capture the same unique perspective that he had spotlighted in his early work. His latest efforts on the Halloween reboot trilogy have felt even less personal. As Green prepares to launch himself into another horror sequel trilogy with this year’s Exorcist: The Believer (and its expected sequel Exorcist: Deceiver in 2025), the once beloved arthouse filmmaker should consider returning to his roots and leaving the studio system behind him.
David Gordon Green Peaked With His Indie Dramas
It’s hard to overstate how groundbreaking Green’s work was in the early 21st century. His 2000 directorial debut George Washington felt like the emergence of a completely new voice in mainstream American independent cinema. Set in rural North Carolina, the coming-of-age drama focused on the experiences of a young group of African-American children that grow up in a poor town rampant with poverty and tragedy. Although “slice of life” indie dramas had begun to emerge in the 1990s, George Washington felt both completely realistic to these childrens’ experiences and artistically satisfying as something more ethereal. George Washington managed to capture the same aura of mysticism as the films of Terrence Malick, but never at the cost of the film’s realism. While Malick’s films tend to be more religious in their visual poetry, George Washington examined hero worship through the story of a young boy that unexpectedly becomes the small town’s hero.
Green continued his study of rural life with his subsequent films All the Real Girls, Undertow, and Snow Angels. While they all focused on similar locations as George Washington, they didn’t suggest that Green was simply capitalizing off of the success of his first feature and replicating himself. All the Real Girls was a poetic study of adolescent love, Undertow was a gripping thriller, and Snow Angels was a more existential study of a collective group’s loss of innocence. Green was able to navigate work within multiple genres without ever sacrificing the perspective he was spotlighting; this side of the “American experience” simply wasn’t one that tended to pop up that often in mainstream films.
Given Green’s continued success and his growing reputation as one of the most noteworthy auteurs of his generation, it made sense that he would be handed the reins to a major studio comedy featuring well known stars. Although Seth Rogen and James Franco starred in many films together, Pineapple Express was easily the most successful. What’s ironic is that the two goofy stoners aren’t that dissimilar from the heroes in Green’s other films; they’re small town “losers” that have been negated by the rest of society, and thus have the most to prove. Green had developed a way to shoehorn in his unique point-of-view within a studio film that also fit the requirements of a mainstream crowd pleaser. Sadly, this streak wasn’t one that he would be able to keep up for that much longer.
David Gordon Green’s New Films Feel Less Personal
2011 saw Green delivering two misfires in a row with The Sitter and Your Highness. While every great director has a few bad apples within their filmography, it’s interesting to see why these two films failed. The Sitter may have focused on a similar underdog character (in this case Jonah Hill as the suspended college student Noah Scott Griffith), but had no empathy for him or his plight; Green’s empathy for the figures he was spotlighting had been consistent throughout his other work. Your Highness felt even less removed from his comfort zone. Any whimsical stoner humor that Green had attempted to insert within the medieval fantasy comedy was forgotten after a series of equally generic CGI monsters.
2013 allowed Green to rebound with two more films that felt closer in line to his early work, and unsurprisingly, they felt like a return to form. Prince Avalanche didn’t feature any of the exaggerated setpieces or random comedy bits that he had been forced to incorporate into Your Highness or The Sitter. In fact, the indie dramedy focused on absolutely nothing but a series of conversations between Texan roadside workers (Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch). It showed Green’s continued ability to create great dialogue and explored more of the existential themes that he had previously been spotlighting. Similarly, Joe abandoned the typical story formula to tell a grounded, realistic story about a small town worker who reflects upon his life’s failures. Not only was Joe a breakthrough film for Tye Sheridan, but it gave Nicolas Cage his best role in years.
While Green followed up this terrific double feature with the underwhelming Al Pacino drama Manglehorn and the generic political satire Our Brand Is Crisis, both films at least contained elements of the social commentary that has been so vital to his work. The same could not be said for his Halloween trilogy. It’s been sad to see such a quintessentially original voice focus his efforts on an underwhelming series of sequels that do nothing but replicate the style of John Carpenter. What’s particularly unfortunate is that the films themselves have kernels of good ideas. Halloween Kills’ analysis of mob mentality and revenge culture would have been a lot more interesting if the film didn’t have to incorporate the unnecessary rewriting of Carpenter’s 1978 classic and yet another return for Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode.
Hopefully, Exorcist: Believer will be a return to form for Green and allow him to craft a satisfying continuation of the legacy of one of the horror genre’s greatest franchises. However, it does feel like Green is yet another interesting indie director who has been forced into the studio system. This is an era where Barry Jenkins is making a prequel to The Lion King, Chloe Zhao followed up her Oscar win with Eternals, and Ryan Coogler hasn’t made an indie film since 2013. Hopefully, Green’s unique voice will not become lost if he continues to experiment in genres outside his wheelhouse.
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